Jeremiah 3:1 - Meaning and Application

Some think these verses belong with the sermon in the previous chapter. They give hope to those who feel the conviction of that rebuke, because God wounds in order to heal. Here we see, first, how deeply this people had abandoned God and turned to idols. The charge is very serious.

They had multiplied their idols and their idol worship. To admit one false god would have been bad enough, but they kept running after more. The picture is of a woman acting like a prostitute with many lovers, that is, many idols (Jeremiah 3:1). Wherever there was a high place in the land, they had made room for an idol (Jeremiah 3:2). In repentance, it is good to remember the specific sins we committed, and the places and company where we committed them. That helps us give glory to God and take shame to ourselves by a clear confession.

They had also looked for chances to sin. They sat by the roads, waiting for idols or for others to join them in idolatry, like Tamar disguised as a prostitute (Genesis 38:14) or like the foolish woman who calls to passersby (Proverbs 9:14-15). The picture is of people who almost hunted for false worship. They were not only sinners themselves, but tempters of others. They were not only traitors, but recruiters for rebellion.

Their sin had become bold and shameless. They had polluted the land with their immorality and with their wickedness (Jeremiah 3:2). Because the sin was open and went unpunished, it became a national sin. Yet they still had a prostitute’s forehead, a brazen face that refused to blush (Jeremiah 3:3). They would not even be ashamed of what should have shamed them for life. Blushing is a sign of virtue, or at least a leftover sign of it. People who are past shame are often past hope.

They had also filled their lives with every kind of evil. They polluted the land not only with their idol worship, but with sins against their neighbors too. Those who are false to God cannot be trusted to be true to people. They had spoken and done evil as much as they could, and would have gone farther if they had known how (Jeremiah 3:5). That is what wickedness looks like at its worst, sinning to the full limit of one’s power.

Second, God had corrected them gently. He did not pour fire and sulfur on them, as he did on Sodom. Instead, since they had openly pursued false gods like Sodom pursued sexual sin, he only withheld the rain from them, and only for part of the year. There was no spring rain, and that should have reminded them that they depended on him every day. Even when they had received the earlier rain, that was no guarantee for the later rain. They still had to keep looking up to God. But this warning did not move them.

Third, God would have been fully right to reject them forever, even if they returned. The law about divorce says that if a woman is put away for adultery and marries another man, her first husband must not take her back again (Deuteronomy 24:4). That would be a disgusting misuse of marriage and would defile the land. Everyone would agree that such a law is just. In the same way, they had good reason to fear that God would refuse to receive them again. They had not merely turned to one strange god. They had played the prostitute with many lovers. If a human being had suffered such betrayal, he would likely never be willing to reconcile.

Fourth, God still kindly invites them, and even directs them, to return. He encourages them to hope for mercy if they repent: “You have been guilty, but return to me” (Jeremiah 3:1). This carries the promise that he will receive them. God is not bound by the same rules he gave to people, and he does not carry the same bitter resentment that people do. For the sake of his covenant with Israel, he will be more gracious to them than any injured husband could be to an unfaithful wife. In receiving repentant sinners, he shows that he is God and not man.

He also expects them to repent and tells them what to say to him. “Will you not from this time cry to me?” (Jeremiah 3:4). Since they had belonged to him and had received so many obligations from him, he asks why they would not turn back now. Though they had gone after false gods, they should see the emptiness of that path and come back, now at last, in this day of mercy. From this time onward, they should apply themselves to him. They had seen their sin and felt its pain, so now they should leave it and return, saying, “I will go and return to my first husband, for then it was better with me than now” (Hosea 2:7).

He expects them to claim him as their own: “Will you not cry to me, My Father, you are the guide of my youth?” (Jeremiah 3:4). They should come to him as a father, asking pardon for their disobedience. “Father, I have sinned” is the right kind of prayer. And they should hope to find in him the tender mercy a father shows to a returning child.

They will come to him as a father, one they can complain to and trust for help and relief. They will now confess him as their Father and themselves as fatherless without him. So they will hope for mercy from him, like the penitents in Hosea 14:3.

They will also come to him as the guide of their youth, that is, as their husband, since that relationship is described in Malachi 2:14. The sense is this: “Though you have gone after many lovers, you will at last remember the love of your marriage vows and return to the husband of your youth.” Or it may mean more generally, “My Father, you have been the guide of my youth.” Youth needs guidance.

In turning back to God, we should gratefully remember that he guided us in our early years along the path of comfort. We should also faithfully promise that he will guide us from now on in the path of duty. We must follow his leading and give ourselves fully to it, so that in every doubtful case our religion will decide for us.

The prophet also expects that they will appeal to God’s mercy and seek the help of that mercy, as in Jeremiah 3:5. They will reason with themselves like this: “Will he keep his anger forever? Surely he will not, because he has made his name known as gracious and merciful.” Repenting sinners may take comfort in this. Though God rebukes, he will not always rebuke. Though he is angry, he will not hold on to his anger forever. Though he brings grief, he will have compassion, and they may use that truth to ask for peace with him.

Some people understand these words as a picture of hypocrisy, and of bold, shameless hypocrisy at that. “Though you have a whore’s forehead, as in Jeremiah 3:3, and are still doing all the evil you can, yet are you not always saying to me, ‘My Father’?” Even while they were most devoted to idols, they still pretended to care about God and his worship, and they kept up the outward forms of devotion. It is a shame for people to call God Father and still do the works of the devil, as the Jews did in John 8:44. It is also a shame to call him the guide of their youth and yet live by the desires of the flesh, while flattering themselves that his anger will end, even as they keep storing up wrath for the day of wrath.